Would anyone be interested in TV show tracking?

I’d like to make Mizuu the best choice when it comes to movies and TV shows on your Android device, and I know that a few of you have been requesting some sort of TV show tracking. I’m seriously considering adding it to the next update, but I want to hear what you guys think first.

Here’s what I’m thinking:

I’ll implement the feature using Trakt.tv, so you’ll need an account with Trakt.tv in order to make use of the feature. Using Trakt.tv has a bunch of advantages, mainly that you’ll be able to sync your TV show tracking between devices – and of course on the web.

Also, I’d like to enable users to create a Trakt.tv account directly within Mizuu to make it as easy as possible. Once the account has been set up, you’ll be able to get your list of upcoming episodes and you can add TV shows you want to track.

I’d also like to add some sort of calendar integration, so Mizuu will add appointments to your calendar to remind you when the episodes are about to air.

My only real concern is that the servers at Trakt.tv aren’t that powerful and I’ve experienced several outages in just a few hours while checking out some of the more advanced parts of the API.

So… What do you think? Any suggestions? Let me know in the comments.

Update: So, I’ll definitely be adding this functionality. It just won’t be in the next update, as I’ll need a bit more time for testing. It’ll be in version 2.3, which is expected around mid June.

32 Comments

abdulhadi
on April 22, 2013 at 10:53 pm

Good idea
It will be amazing to have tv guide
I hope you add it to the next update
Thanks

Mizuu concentrates only on Movies and TV Shows. Don’t read me wrong, Mizuu does a much better job at this than all the apps mentioned above. But this limits drastically my usage of Mizuu, as most of my Videos are Personal Videos.

I understand it is important (and fun) for you to put some effort developing TV Shows, but do not underestimate the importance of “Personal Videos” “Home Movies” “Home Video” “All videos” however you want to call it in Mizuu.

The biggest issue might seem rather trivial, but it’s pretty serious: Thumbnails of the video files. It’s incredibly easy to do with local content, but it’s really complicated with network files. Also, if I do manage to pull it off, it’ll be limited to support the file formats that Android supports natively.

I see, I can understand the issue now. 2 of these apps (Plex and DS Video) actually have their agents running on the NAS, so they have an edge over Mizuu.

Having said that, 3 others (Archos, BubbleUPnP, Serenity for Plex) don’t and they manage to get the thumbnails. I just need to select “Plex Media Server” (the other choice being “DS Synology”) from the list of Media Servers (UPnP). So I guess they get the thumbnail from the Plex Media Server. Mizuu could do the same.

Worst case, you could display the list without the thumbnails, just the title. That would be a step forward in the right direction.

All of those have a way of rendering the thumbnails. Archos is a video player, so it can just use its video decoding and same goes for BubbleUPnP. Plex runs on a server that can do the decoding and simply serve the thumbnails from that.

HI, I’ve just tried ArkMC, a DLNA UPnP Media Centre on Android. It detects Plex on my home network and gets all the thumbnails from Plex. ArkMC is just a piece of software running on my tablet, it does not require a media server of its own.

Could you not pull the same trick for Mizuu and index Home videos as well?

I would love a clever integration with the watch list. In general, I think the watch list would make more sense for TV shows than for Movies. I’m thinking of a scenario, where that other app legally and automatically downloads new episodes based on RSS feeds, and Mizuu adds the new files to the watchlist, so I can sit down after a hard work day and just hit the play button.

Asking here at the forums is a great idea, because I think people have different behaviours in watching and following TV shows, and making some research can help Mizuu stand out by creating a flawless experience.

I agree, the watch list should work for TV shows as well. Some sort of integration between local content and web content would be cool, but that’s pretty advanced stuff, and I’m only looking to get the basics now.

RSS feeds is also a pretty interesting idea. Not a priority at the moment, though 🙂

Deeper trakt integration would be completely awesome. There are a lot of apps that do this quite well but to be honest, none quite matches Mizuu for beauty (I’m mainly thinking out TV Showsfavs and Seriesguide X here), not to mention integration with the actual media library app would be great. Obviously I would expect Mizuu to automatically tag episodes watched when I watch them using Mizuu, but I still think manual tagging would be a must just as a backup.

I second Matth’s suggestion for integration with the watch list, since I have a NAS running Sick Beard that handles my downloads. Mizuu could then periodically search for the new episodes once they’ve been aired and add them to the watch list when the NAS finishes downloading.

I have to say I’m not a great fan of calender appointments either. I would much rather have some sort of widget that lists upcoming and recent (unwatched) episodes, but maybe that’s just me.

I don’t know Trakt.tv, but if the servers are not so good as you implied, please keep in mind many naive users (myself included) would blame MIZUU when the function failed to work – bad reputation for you. I would love a tracking function though, but can it be a simple tick-box type of arrangement within Mizuu itself? And a simple way to reset the entire series to “unwatched” so that I can start again and start tracking again. I watch series over and over and over (I need to get out more). Just my thoughts. 🙂

It turns out that Trakt is actually pretty stable. The instability was caused by a massive 40x increase in traffic and user registrations due to an iOS application getting featured. Sadly, the majority of the traffic came during the night for the developers at Trakt, but they fixed it by adding more severs in the morning. It’ll be good 🙂

Is this than possible that all movies in Mizuu automatic in the Trakt market as “in collection”?
since now im not jused Trakt, but the funktionality are very great, and if all will syncron on my tablet and MobilePhone it will be realy a very good thing!!!

I’ve added cross-sync of favourites, watched status and watchlist. If you’ve got 100 movies in your library that are favourites, but haven’t marked them as favourites on Trakt, Mizuu will do that for you, and vice versa.

The sync process happens every time you’ve updated either the movies library or TV shows library.